History

I know history isn’t important.  It doesn’t have its own place on the public school state tests.   For years if the coach or art teacher (or someone) didn’t have enough classes to teach, he/she was given a history class or two.  After all, “It’s just history.”  (If "Anyone can teach," what do we ask about one teaching history?)  

I was once, at one of the colleges, asked to fill in at the last minute (an emergency) for another history class.  I agreed and asked the dean relevant questions:  What course was it?  What was the subject/topic for the day?  She just replied, “I don’t know.  It’s history.”  She dismissed me with, “History is history.” 

It seems fewer and fewer college students are majoring in history.  Many people see it as a “dead-end” subject, one that doesn’t lead to jobs.  I'm sure students are counseled to believe that.  They are told this by family members and others. How short-sighted and narrow-minded is that?

Last September, I received a schedule of events for the Amherst Homecoming Weekend later in October.  At Homecomings (and Reunions) the college presents activities for the Alumni, often classes, lectures, panel discussions, to attend.  (Yeah, I’ve heard the jokes.  “Do you have to take a test?”)  I noted that, at least on this schedule, there were no history classes (the students' history classes) for the Alumni to sit in on.  There were economics, English, math, a variety of sciences, etc., but not a single history course.  Maybe, I hope, history classes don’t meet on Fridays?  Yeah, that must be the reason, not that nobody is interested in history.

That said, reading history, especially written by gifted writers like David McCullough, Joseph Ellis, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and others, is not just entertaining, exciting to read.  Episodes of the past, requiring very little imagination, can easily be seen in our times and lives of today.  Are these the lessons of history teachers speak of?  ("...teachers speak of?"  I remember what Winston Churchill purportedly said about the rule to never end a sentence with a prepostion.  "This is the sort of thing up with which I will not put."  So there!)  

A Russian official in the ‘50s said, “The American loves his car, his refrigerator, his house.  But he does not love his country.”   Perhaps a bit of hyperbole, but I think maybe that, in a sense, pertains to today.  Do we love our NFL, reality and other television shows, vacations, and other creature comforts more than we love or at least appreciate the country that has allowed us to have them?  For many Americans, it sure seems so.  They take things for granted.  Many think they “deserve” things, as if getting them is a “right.”  (Everything is a “right” nowadays.  I saw a headline the other day claiming, “Clean water is a right.”)  And for a good number of them, getting those things for free, that is, paid for by others, is also a “right.”  Often, such an attitude is buttressed by politicians pandering for votes.

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History can teach us, if we are willing to learn, that what we have today did not always come easily.  Many people had to work hard, sacrificed their lives, etc. so we can live as we do.  I read a story way back when about Lech Walesa, the Polish leader of the union Solidarity.  Solidarity took the lead in what was to lead to the downfall of the commies in Poland.  He spoke of the US Bill of Rights.  He urged Americans not to take the Bill of Rights for granted, claiming he read it every day.  Here is a guy who was beaten and imprisoned, whose life was always on the line, who had his family threatened, all to want for Poles what we have here in the US.  He is telling us that our rights do not come cheaply, that they are not automatic.  There were many people in US history who experienced the same dangers as Walesa.  We should know about them.

I thought about this the other day, too.  Today, the US has the best football players and perhaps other athletes in the world, but do we have the best teachers in the world?  Is the answer a given?  And the way we compensate those groups, we are likely to perpetuate that.  But that's a topic for another day.